This chapter describes the framework known as
pkginstall, whose key features are:

Generic installation and manipulation of directories and files
outside the pkgsrc-handled tree, LOCALBASE.

Automatic handling of configuration files during installation,
provided that packages are correctly designed.

Generation and installation of system startup scripts.

Registration of system users and groups.

Registration of system shells.

Automatic updating of fonts databases.

The following sections inspect each of the above points in detail.

You may be thinking that many of the things described here could be
easily done with simple code in the package's post-installation target
(post-install). This is incorrect,
as the code in them is only executed when building from source. Machines
using binary packages could not benefit from it at all (as the code itself
could be unavailable). Therefore, the only way to achieve any of the items
described above is by means of the installation scripts, which are
automatically generated by pkginstall.

15.1. Files and directories outside the installation prefix

As you already know, the PLIST file holds a list
of files and directories that belong to a package. The names used in it
are relative to the installation prefix (${PREFIX}),
which means that it cannot register files outside this directory (absolute
path names are not allowed). Despite this restriction, some packages need
to install files outside this location; e.g., under
${VARBASE} or
${PKG_SYSCONFDIR}. The only way to achieve this
is to create such files during installation time by using
installation scripts.

The generic installation scripts are shell scripts that can
contain arbitrary code. The list of scripts to execute is taken from
the INSTALL_FILE variable, which defaults to
INSTALL. A similar variable exists for package
removal (DEINSTALL_FILE, whose default is
DEINSTALL). These scripts can run arbitrary
commands, so they have the potential to create and manage files
anywhere in the file system.

Using these general installation files is not recommended, but
may be needed in some special cases. One reason for avoiding them is
that the user has to trust the packager that there is no unwanted or
simply erroneous code included in the installation script. Also,
previously there were many similar scripts for the same functionality,
and fixing a common error involved finding and changing all of
them.

The pkginstall framework offers another, standardized way. It
provides generic scripts to abstract the manipulation of such files
and directories based on variables set in the package's
Makefile. The rest of this section describes
these variables.

15.1.1. Directory manipulation

The following variables can be set to request the creation of
directories anywhere in the file system:

MAKE_DIRS and OWN_DIRS
contain a list of directories that should be created and should attempt
to be destroyed by the installation scripts. The difference between
the two is that the latter prompts the administrator to remove any
directories that may be left after deinstallation (because they were
not empty), while the former does not. Example:

MAKE_DIRS+= ${VARBASE}/foo/private

MAKE_DIRS_PERMS and
OWN_DIRS_PERMS contain a list of tuples describing
which directories should be created and should attempt to be destroyed
by the installation scripts. Each tuple holds the following values,
separated by spaces: the directory name, its owner, its group and its
numerical mode. For example:

The difference between the two is exactly the same as their
non-PERMS counterparts.

15.1.2. File manipulation

Creating non-empty files outside the installation prefix is tricky
because the PLIST forces all files to be inside it.
To overcome this problem, the only solution is to extract the file in the
known place (i.e., inside the installation prefix) and copy it to the
appropriate location during installation (done by the installation scripts
generated by pkginstall). We will call the former the master
file in the following paragraphs, which describe the variables
that can be used to automatically and consistently handle files outside the
installation prefix:

CONF_FILES and
REQD_FILES are pairs of master and target files.
During installation time, the master file is copied to the target one
if and only if the latter does not exist. Upon deinstallation, the
target file is removed provided that it was not modified by the
installation.

The difference between the two is that the latter prompts the
administrator to remove any files that may be left after
deinstallation (because they were not empty), while the former does
not.

CONF_FILES_PERMS and
REQD_FILES_PERMS contain tuples describing master
files as well as their target locations. For each of them, it also
specifies their owner, their group and their numeric permissions, in
this order. For example:

The difference between the two is exactly the same as their
non-PERMS counterparts.

15.2. Configuration files

Configuration files are special in the sense that they are installed
in their own specific directory, PKG_SYSCONFDIR, and
need special treatment during installation (most of which is automated by
pkginstall). The main concept you must bear in mind is that files marked
as configuration files are automatically copied to the right place (somewhere
inside PKG_SYSCONFDIR) during installation if
and only if they didn't exist before. Similarly, they will not
be removed if they have local modifications. This ensures that
administrators never lose any custom changes they may have made.

15.2.1. How PKG_SYSCONFDIR is set

As said before, the PKG_SYSCONFDIR variable
specifies where configuration files shall be installed. Its contents are
set based upon the following variables:

PKG_SYSCONFBASE: The configuration's root
directory. Defaults to ${PREFIX}/etc although it may
be overridden by the user to point to his preferred location (e.g.,
/etc, /etc/pkg, etc.).
Packages must not use it directly.

PKG_SYSCONFSUBDIR: A subdirectory of
PKG_SYSCONFBASE under which the configuration files
for the package being built shall be installed. The definition of this
variable only makes sense in the package's
Makefile (i.e., it is not user-customizable).

As an example, consider the Apache package,
www/apache24, which places its
configuration files under the
httpd/ subdirectory of
PKG_SYSCONFBASE. This should be set in the package
Makefile.

PKG_SYSCONFVAR: Specifies the name of the
variable that holds this package's configuration directory (if
different from PKG_SYSCONFBASE). It defaults to
PKGBASE's value, and is always prefixed with
PKG_SYSCONFDIR.

PKG_SYSCONFDIR.${PKG_SYSCONFVAR}: Holds the
directory where the configuration files for the package identified by
PKG_SYSCONFVAR's shall be placed.

Based on the above variables, pkginstall determines the value of
PKG_SYSCONFDIR, which is the only
variable that can be used within a package to refer to its configuration
directory. The algorithm used to set its value is basically the
following:

If PKG_SYSCONFDIR.${PKG_SYSCONFVAR} is set,
its value is used.

If the previous variable is not defined but
PKG_SYSCONFSUBDIR is set in the package's
Makefile, the resulting value is
${PKG_SYSCONFBASE}/${PKG_SYSCONFSUBDIR}.

Otherwise, it is set to
${PKG_SYSCONFBASE}.

It is worth mentioning that ${PKG_SYSCONFDIR} is
automatically added to OWN_DIRS. See Section 15.1.1, “Directory manipulation” what this means. This does not apply to
subdirectories of ${PKG_SYSCONFDIR}, they still have to
be created with OWN_DIRS or MAKE_DIRS.

15.2.2. Telling the software where configuration files are

Given that pkgsrc (and users!) expect configuration files to be in a
known place, you need to teach each package where it shall install its
files. In some cases you will have to patch the package Makefiles to
achieve it. If you are lucky, though, it may be as easy as passing an
extra flag to the configuration script; this is the case of GNU Autoconf-
generated files:

CONFIGURE_ARGS+= --sysconfdir=${PKG_SYSCONFDIR}

Note that this specifies where the package has to look
for its configuration files, not where they will be originally
installed (although the difference is never explicit,
unfortunately).

15.2.3. Patching installations

As said before, pkginstall automatically handles configuration files.
This means that the packages themselves must not
touch the contents of ${PKG_SYSCONFDIR}
directly. Bad news is that many software installation scripts
will, out of the box, mess with the contents of that directory. So what is
the correct procedure to fix this issue?

You must teach the package (usually by manually patching it) to
install any configuration files under the examples hierarchy,
share/examples/${PKGBASE}/. This way, the
PLIST registers them and the administrator always
has the original copies available.

Once the required configuration files are in place (i.e., under the
examples hierarchy), the pkginstall framework can use them as master copies
during the package installation to update what is in
${PKG_SYSCONFDIR}. To achieve this, the variables
CONF_FILES and CONF_FILES_PERMS are
used. Check out Section 15.1.2, “File manipulation” for information
about their syntax and their purpose. Here is an example, taken from the
mail/mutt package:

Note that the EGDIR variable is specific to that
package and has no meaning outside it.

15.2.4. Disabling handling of configuration files

The automatic copying of config files can be toggled by setting the
environment variable PKG_CONFIG prior to package
installation.

15.3. System startup scripts

System startup scripts are special files because they must be
installed in a place known by the underlying OS, usually outside the
installation prefix. Therefore, the same rules described in Section 15.1, “Files and directories outside the installation prefix” apply, and the same solutions
can be used. However, pkginstall provides a special mechanism to handle
these files.

In order to provide system startup scripts, the package has
to:

Store the script inside ${FILESDIR}, with
the .sh suffix appended. Considering the
print/cups package as an example, it has a
cupsd.sh in its files directory.

Tell pkginstall to handle it, appending the name of the script,
without its extension, to the RCD_SCRIPTS variable.
Continuing the previous example:

RCD_SCRIPTS+= cupsd

Once this is done, pkginstall will do the following steps for each
script in an automated fashion:

Process the file found in the files directory applying all the
substitutions described in the FILES_SUBST
variable.

Copy the script from the files directory to the examples
hierarchy, ${PREFIX}/share/examples/rc.d/. Note
that this master file must be explicitly registered in the
PLIST.

Add code to the installation scripts to copy the startup script
from the examples hierarchy into the system-wide startup scripts
directory.

15.3.1. Disabling handling of system startup scripts

The automatic copying of config files can be toggled by setting the
environment variable PKG_RCD_SCRIPTS prior to package
installation. Note that the scripts will be always copied inside the
examples hierarchy, ${PREFIX}/share/examples/rc.d/, no
matter what the value of this variable is.

15.4. System users and groups

If a package needs to create special users and/or groups during
installation, it can do so by using the pkginstall framework.

Users can be created by adding entries to the
PKG_USERS variable. Each entry has the following
syntax:

user:group

Further specification of user details may be done by setting
per-user variables.
PKG_UID.user is the
numeric UID for the user.
PKG_GECOS.user is the
user's description or comment.
PKG_HOME.user is the
user's home directory, and defaults to
/nonexistent if not specified.
PKG_SHELL.user is the
user's shell, and defaults to /sbin/nologin if
not specified.

Similarly, groups can be created by adding entries to the
PKG_GROUPS variable, whose syntax is:

group

The numeric GID of the group may be set by defining
PKG_GID.group.

If a package needs to create the users and groups at an earlier
stage, then it can set USERGROUP_PHASE to either
configure,build, or
pre-install to indicate the phase before which the
users and groups are created. In this case, the numeric UIDs and GIDs
of the created users and groups are automatically hardcoded into the
final installation scripts.

15.5. System shells

Packages that install system shells should register them in the shell
database, /etc/shells, to make things easier to the
administrator. This must be done from the installation scripts to keep
binary packages working on any system. pkginstall provides an easy way to
accomplish this task.

When a package provides a shell interpreter, it has to set the
PKG_SHELL variable to its absolute file name. This will
add some hooks to the installation scripts to handle it. Consider the
following example, taken from shells/zsh:

PKG_SHELL= ${PREFIX}/bin/zsh

15.5.1. Disabling shell registration

The automatic registration of shell interpreters can be disabled by
the administrator by setting the PKG_REGISTER_SHELLS
environment variable to NO.

15.6. Fonts

Packages that install X11 fonts should update the database files
that index the fonts within each fonts directory. This can easily be
accomplished within the pkginstall framework.

When a package installs X11 fonts, it must list the directories in
which fonts are installed in the
FONTS_DIRS.type variables,
where type can be one of “ttf”,
“type1” or “x11”. This will add hooks to the
installation scripts to run the appropriate commands to update the fonts
database files within each of those directories. For convenience, if the
directory path is relative, it is taken to be relative to the package's
installation prefix. Consider the following example, taken from fonts/dbz-ttf:

FONTS_DIRS.ttf= ${PREFIX}/share/fonts/X11/TTF

15.6.1. Disabling automatic update of the fonts databases

The automatic update of fonts databases can be disabled by
the administrator by setting the PKG_UPDATE_FONTS_DB
environment variable to NO.